Just When You Thought Painting a Car Couldn’t Get More Expensive

I’ve gotten fairly numb to how expensive paint is these days but even I got sticker shock over this. I had to order two special limited edition toners for this one car. Not a special custom color or anything. Actually, it’s on a lowly Chevy Trax, which is about the saddest vehicle ever to wear a bow tie. Look at these prices for a 180ml bottle. Those numbers are USD, not pesos. My language when I looked at the invoice would have offended anyone who hasn’t spent time in either prison or the navy.

Aug 24, 2026

Reply to Hupp31…

Replies (28)

· 3w

People don't believe me when I tell them a gallon of paint can be $2,000. Plus the clear, plus the hardener, plus 500 hours worth of work to paint the car. Not counting the other 500 hours of assembly and disassembly, etc.

The days of of painting a full collectible car are coming to a close.

· 3w

Up until recently I know Maaco was advertising paint jobs for 1k-3k. What are they spraying with? Colored water??

· 3w

That is a question for @Hupp31 since he runs a body shop. I've never had experience with those discount paint shops like Maaco. But I can only imagine as they are just spraying whatever you prepped. And we all know the prep is 75% of the finished product.

· 3w

There are some value brand paints out there and I’m sure they’re using the cheapest they can find. I’m pretty sure the prices that Maaco advertises would just be to spray it, no prep, no disassembly. You wouldn’t want to see the results. I have heard of people doing all of the prep work and just having them shoot it and getting reasonable results.

· 3w

I’m not sure if they’re making this stuff with unicorn tears for what they’re charging now. When I started in the trade 27 years ago, we were using the same paint line from the same supplier. The price has gone up by 500% in that time. Meanwhile, our shop labor rate has only gone up 50%.

· 3w

I'm wondering how much of the increase in paint costs is related to tightening environment rules. Somehow I feel like the same product in Mexico is a lot less money.

· 3w

It’s worth taking this into consideration when you look at what your agreed price is on your collector insurance. Particularly if it’s a car that you can’t just go out and find another one of. Even a little fender bender can cost a fortune and you don’t want to run the risk of it being totaled over something like that.

· 3w

Would be interesting to hear from someone that has had a car painted my one of these discount shops how the car came out. Obviously the prep work by the owner is critical.

I'm assuming you need to mask your own car?

· 3w

I knew a guy that did it on a work truck. He was just looking for a quick cleanup and color change. He got it all primed and blocked and had them mask and spray it. It was presentable. Better than an inexperienced amateur would be able to do in their driveway and a whole lot less hassle. So in that case, I’d say it was a decent value.

· 3w

I’ve always wondered with that scenario how it would look, and also how stable it might be over time.

· 3w

When I was in HS eons ago a friend did it with his Camaro. He did the scuffing and took the bumpers and wheel trim off. The results were less than fantastic but if you saw the base for where the paint was applied it was hard to expect more.

· 3w

John, I can't help but think a few trips through the car wash and your car is back to its original color.

· 3w

Travis, do you know what they are using for paint? I'm willing to bet it is a private label something that they are having made with their formula and are buying 1ks of gallons of it at once. A cheap 1 stage enamel of some sort.

· 3w

It wouldn’t surprise me if it’s private label. I would expect they’re using base/clear at this point. Enamel is most likely only used on some fleet/ industrial applications now.

· 3w

@hupp31 what is the cost of sand paper these days? I had a car painted years ago and the shop was charging me a buck a sheet of 220/400 wet paper. I thought I was getting robbed. It seemed odd to me they tracked materials to that level.

· 3w

My price on a sheet of 6” DA sander paper is almost $1.50. The bigger shops actually have the techs draw sandpaper from a kiosk which tracks everything right to the individual job to be billed. It’s a major expense.

· 3w

I remember when I was paying around a buck a sheet for wet paper too. You need to post a picture of that kiosk. That is insane but understandable!

My issue with the tracking was that back when it was 60/hr you would be paying a guy a buck to write down the 1 dollar piece of sandpaper or the 25 cent cotter pin. Would rather just see a misc materials rate tacked on the bill.

· 3w

If you don't track stuff like that, it will bury you.
Material costs have gone crazy and, unfortunately a shop supplies charge doesn't cover a lot of it.
I track everything that's over a dollar and even some crimp connectors in that range.

· 3w

Picture a snack vending machine for materials. The tech just enters in the RO number and it all gets tracked right to the job and operating software spits out an invoice. It would definitely be a good thing in a big production shop where you might have 20 techs to keep track of. Also might help keep some materials from finding their way into someone’s lunchbox to be used on side jobs at the end of the day, which has been known to happen.
I’m fortunate that my shop is small so I can run a pretty tight ship and not waste any materials. I just use a flat dollar rate per hour of repair to calculate it. Sort of a cost average, sometimes you come out ahead, other times you donate some.

(edited)

· 3w

Travis, your system make sense to me. Sometimes you come out ahead, sometimes behind but it averages out and you don't waste an hour a day writing down cotter pins and washers on a clip board.

· 3w

Dispensing machine is crazy but if a single piece of sand paper is 1.50 I can understand why you need something like that in a big shop.

· 3w

Right. The other thing is, nobody wants to stop while they’re in the heat of battle to write that stuff down. So it might get forgotten or it might get guesstimated after the fact and it loses any kind of accuracy.

This was always a point of disagreement between my former boss/ mentor and I. He started out in the one-man shop, scraping by just to keep the lights on days so he obsessed over the cost of consumables. I look at it as being a small percentage of total cost and would rather focus on labor and parts which are the big chunks of the pie.

· 3w

The biggest reason for those dispensing machines in collision shops is being able to produce an invoice to give an insurance company. They hate taking a body shop’s word for it but will gladly pay off an invoice. Drives me nuts.

· 3w

@hupp31 what are insurance companies paying these days for an hourly rate? Or are the jobs by the book?

· 3w

Heh, whatever they can get away with. But seriously, it varies a lot by location. In CT, we set our own rates and they’re not set by the state like in Mass. and RI. My shop rate is $75/hr which is about average for the area. A few insurance companies will actually pay that but most are still paying $10-$15 less.

· 3w

Those dispensing machines are crazy.

· 3w

Paint is a petroleum product, just like upholstery foam, vinyl, rubber, etc.
If we continue to take people who cut down trees to make protest signs and sit in their plastic kayak while wearing a nylon windbreaker seriously, this is what happens.

· 3w

The petroleum is part of it. Also, the pigments, mica, and metallic in the colors come from all over the world so there are all sorts of influences. I remember there was a price jump after the Fukushima reactor disaster because a couple pigments were sourced from Japan. That’s just one example. It goes up every year for various reasons.